The Sadness that Follows Eager Reading

I devour books. It's true. And when I've finally finished my favorites, I feel slightly melancholy. Like I've left friends for good. The joy of books deepens as you reread them (but I can only do this with the best; an unfortunate habit), but you can never replicate the experience of savoring a book for the first time. Thoroughly basking in the details and uncertainty--that only happens on the initial interaction with a text.

I just closed the cover of Les Miserables. I've been reading it on and off for almost a month; but I wanted to just sit down and read through the days until I had memorized each word as I compared translations. (Note to translators: yes, the original language will probably be superior, but still attempt to translate the verse included: otherwise you aggravate the reader. Thank goodness for the multiple translations on my desk.) I loved Jean Valjean even more than anticipated. I giggled at M. Gillenormand. I groaned over the Thendardiers. I balked at Marius and Cosette. I mourned for little Gavroche. I concluded that I would like to have lunch with Victor Hugo. What fiction writer can drench his prose with so many asides--to the extent of calling one section "A Parenthetical" and going off on the parallel of convents and the galleys? Again, great texts convince me that genre is not the medium but a categorical status that means nothing. Great texts, regardless of form, are lasting and resonate as true. There is my abstract answer to the question of what determines literature. Lasting + True.

Some lines:

"But, by wishing to sit down, we may stop the progress even of the human race" (717).

"What love begins can be finished only by God.
....
What a gloomy thing, not to know the address of one's soul!" (808).

"The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.
To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, behold the aim. This is why we cry: education, knowledge! to learn is to read is to kindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkles.
But he who says light does not necessarily say joy. There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius" (854).

"A people, like a star, has the right of eclipse. And all is well, provided the light return and the eclipse do not degenerate into night. Dawn and resurrection are synonyms" (1073).

And thus, a life goal to read Les Miserables was even more enjoyable than anticipated.